Indigenous leaders call for youth centre in bid to curb crime

A group of Townsville's Indigenous community leaders says the city lacks the proper resources to tackle Indigenous youth crime.

A steering committee of concerned locals has formed to try and curb the high prevalence of juvenile crime.

The group's facilitator, Florence Onus, says a Townsville youth centre, like one built in the Sydney suburb of Redfern, would help prevent boredom.

She says it would be a better solution than the State Government-run youth boot camp in north Queensland.

"We don't believe that boot camps is the answer," she said.

"We believe ... you've got to get to the core issues of why the kids are out on the streets, why are they committing the crime, that's [a youth boot camp] just a bandaid approach because we know that a lot of these kids are out on the streets for a number of reasons.

"The reasons why lots of these kids are committing these crimes is because they're bored. There's not enough activity to keep these young people busy ... they're either not in school or they're on the dole and on the streets and there's just nothing for the youth here in Townsville in general."

However, he says State Government funding is tight and the group should look at using existing facilities to run a youth centre.

"I'm a little bit against having individual organisations going off and we have too many trying to do the same thing but more importantly when we start talking infrastructure and building buildings, we're starting to talk a lot of money and I would much rather see that money go back into programs that utilise the existing buildings like PCYCs," he said.

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